On his way across the Pamirs in search of Buddhist texts (518 ce), the Chinese pilgrim Song Yun noted that the crest of the bare, cold, snowy highlands was commonly believed to be “the middle point of heaven and earth”: Yet, heaven provided. The vast majority of the population of Asia lives in the regions between the inland mountains and the seas—from Pakistan through India, Myanmar (Burma), Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, and eastern China up to the Bo Hai (Gulf of Chihli) and the offshore island groups of Japan, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka. In the early 21st ...(100 of 27369 words)